“Sounds good. Let’s see if that man of yours will take us back down the mountain on those horses he’s so fond of.”
Mattie drove Stella and Robo back to the station in the K-9 unit, all the while trying to thrust the image of her brother’s charred body out of her mind. They arrived a few minutes before six in the evening, and Rainbow was still on duty at the dispatcher’s desk. She greeted Mattie and Stella with her typical enthusiasm, but backed off right away when she saw the look on their faces. Mattie nodded at her, signaling that they would talk later, and followed Stella into the detective’s private office. After Robo came inside behind her, she closed the door, at the same time pulling her cell phone from her pocket.
“Here’s Tamara’s number.” She rattled it off as she slumped into a chair beside Stella’s desk. Robo circled once and, heaving a sigh, plopped down at her side. He’d had a long day with more than an enough exercise to tire him out.
Stella began to dial. “I’ll introduce myself to her first.”
After concentrating on listening for a few moments, Stella spoke. “Hello, is this Tamara Bennett?” After a pause, Stella continued. “This Detective Stella LoSasso from the Timber Creek County Sheriff’s Department. I’m here with William Cobb’s sister, Deputy Mattie Cobb. Are you able to speak with us for a few minutes?” Another pause. “Just one moment, let me put you on speaker phone.”
Mattie spoke to let Tamara know she’d joined them on the line. “Hello, Tamara, this is Mattie.”
Tamara’s voice held a sharp edge of concern. “Mattie, what is it? What’s going on?”
Stella nodded at Mattie to take the lead.
“We’re calling to ask you some questions about Willie,” Mattie said. She paused to take a deep breath, trying to loosen the tightness in her chest. “Does he have any tattoos on his back?”
“He has several. Why? Why are you asking?”
“How about at the base of his neck?”
“He has a heart with some ivy leaves entwined on the edges. Inside, it says ‘Tamara and Elliott Forever’.” Tamara’s breath caught. “He said it would show his dedication to his new family.” She had begun to cry, and Mattie hesitated, tears stinging her own eyes.
Stella jumped in, so that Mattie wouldn’t have to say the next words. “Ms. Bennett, we’ve located a person who has a tattoo that matches that description. He was found in the mountains west of our town here in Colorado, and it’s highly likely that he’s your friend William. I’m very sorry to have to tell you that he was found dead.”
Now Tamara’s sobbing could be heard plainly, and Mattie squeezed her eyes shut to hold her grief in check. She wished she’d been able to meet this woman who’d shared Willie’s life and had encouraged him to start over. She wished she could be in the same room with her instead of hundreds of miles apart. She wished … well, she wished everything had been different.
Why did I wait to reconnect with my brother? Now it’s too late.
Tamara controlled her sobs enough to speak. “I knew it. I’ve had a terrible feeling that something bad happened to him.”
Stella reached for paper and pen. “We need to find out more about William, and it’s important that we get started with our investigation right away. Do you feel up to answering questions now, or should I give you a few minutes?”
“How did he die? Where did you find him?” Tamara asked.
The details were too grisly to share at this point. Mattie tried to reach out across the miles. “We’re trying to find out how he died, Tamara. There’ll be an autopsy very soon. He was found in the mountains west of Timber Creek.”
“He hated Timber Creek.”
“I know. Why do you think he was out here?”
A pause, and then Tamara answered, her voice strained. “He wouldn’t go there. It wasn’t like him to disappear. He never would have left Elliott stranded after school without calling me to cover for him. He must’ve been taken. I thought that from the very beginning.”
“What do you mean by taken?” Stella asked.
“Taken against his will.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because he turned his back on some old friends from a rough crowd. You know, when he got out of rehab.”
Stella gazed at Mattie for a few beats, a furrow between her eyebrows. She began writing on her pad. “Were any of these people from Timber Creek?”
“I don’t think so. But I don’t know really.”
Stella showed Mattie what she’d written: How do rough crowd in California and body here in Timber Creek connect???
Mattie shrugged. “Tamara, can you give us the names of any of these people?”
Tamara heaved a breath, apparently pausing to think. “I know some street names. Ziggy the Fish, Shark, Popeye. Maybe the police here could help identify the gang these guys are in.”
Stella was nodding while she recorded the names. “I think so, too. Do you have a case number on William’s missing person report?”
“I have it,” Mattie said. “That and the detective’s name who was assigned to the case.”
Stella acknowledged Mattie with a nod and moved on with another question for Tamara. “Where did William work?”
When she answered, Stella recorded the name and phone number of the business.
Mattie couldn’t shake the thought that Willie’s killer must have connected with him sometime in the past ten days. Everything had been fine when they talked—it had to be something since then. “You told me this morning that Willie’s behavior changed recently. Can you pinpoint when that happened?”
Tamara sniffled. “I guess I first noticed it a week ago Sunday night. That was the night he made an excuse to leave home instead of watching movies with me and Elliott.”
“What did he say?”
“That he had to go into work. I said, ‘On a Sunday night?’ And he said that they had a back load of work to do on Monday, and the boss wanted to get an early start.”
“Did you call to check to see if he was actually there?”
“That’s part of the whole rehab thing, see? I don’t check up on him, at least not yet. If I want to be able to trust him, I have to act like I trust him until he shows me I can’t.”
Sounded a bit convoluted, but Mattie thought she understood the concept. “What happened after Sunday night?”
“Nothing on Monday, although he seemed more nervous than usual. But on Tuesday, he said he was going to have dinner with a friend. I asked him who the friend was, and he said it was an old friend of the family’s.”
Mattie’s radar lit up. “Was this friend from Timber Creek?”
“I didn’t get that. When I asked for details, William shut me down. That’s what I meant by secretive. He wouldn’t even look at me. Just said he had to go out and meet this guy, and that he might be out late. I was asleep when he got home, and it looked like he spent the rest of the night on the couch.”
Mattie wondered if her mother was the one who’d shown up in Willie’s life. “Did he say he was meeting a man or a woman?”
“A man. But who knows?”
“Did you talk about it Wednesday morning?”
“It was a rush. I’d stayed up late, so I was tired and overslept, and William looked really stressed out. I had to get Elliott ready and take him to school. I thought we’d talk about it that night. But then …” Tamara’s voice broke and dissolved into sobs.
Mattie finished Tamara’s thought for her. “Then he disappeared.”
“Yeah.”